This is mama_pajama_1’s blog. She’s a chatter from the room I’ve been in since the user rooms went down, and used to be somewhat regular in AvC as well….

The link is actually a permalink to one specific post in her blog — about the abuse of hermit crabs. I was going to comment on it, but there doesn’t seem to be a ‘comment’ option that I can find on yahoo’s blog-system. So I decided to link to it and post my comments here, on my blog….

Pet fads are a rather horrible reality, and certain fad pets showing up at non-pet-stores is even worse. I remember seeing cages of hermit crabs for sale every year at Knobles Grove.

Kids tormenting animals in pet stores [and elsewheres] happens almost every day. Very few employees care. I’m going to go so far as to say that many pet stores are horrible places for animals.

Maybe I should find a few of those kids to call me a PETA nut now.

On that — I’m not sure I’d recommend calling PETA over something like that. Some sort of local animal welfare group might be better — and less likely to get sidetracked by restaurants serving chicken….

They really shouldn’t be leaving these animals out with open cages where people can get to them without being supervised. I’m sure it never occurred to them that they could end up losing these animals to people who shoplift them. I know of an incident where a reticulated python walked out of a pet store because the guy handling it was left unsupervised with it….

I’m sure hermit crabs are cheaper, but…meh.

I keep thinking back to ‘fad pets’. And that just makes me want to start up on iguanas and fads and people not knowing how to take care of the things they purchase, but it’s not just igs or hermit crabs or the other exotics. People impulse-buy the cute puppy or kitten [that was probably tormented by people who like to knock on the glass a lot] and just don’t even think about what’s involved in taking care of it.

The consumers need a little more education than just ‘crabs may pinch’ signs up with the price tags — if there even were prices.

Maybe they should dip into their budget and print out some fact sheets. A quick google search on hermit crab care probably turns up more than a few, although they probably don’t want to put out things warning against which hermit crabs a person shouldn’t buy, because that might lead to some real issues for them….